Two weeks after Rob Walker completed his epic Absent Friends Tour and he is still feeling the effects, but says it is ‘one of the best, most fulfilling things’ of his life.
Walker spent 19 days cycling and running from John O’Groats to Land’s End in memory of four friends who tragically lost their lives over an 18-month period.
The broadcaster was raising money for two charities – and he raised some serious cash – but also looked to spread some joy after a terrible time, meeting people along the way and handing out bottles of fizz to anyone and everyone to brighten their day.
A man with more energy than almost anyone on the planet, he is still a bit drained from the experience, but loved it nonetheless.
‘It’s taking a long time for my energy to come back,’ Rob told Metro.co.uk. ‘I don’t think I realised how much it had taken out of me physically and emotionally until I finished.
‘I really enjoyed it, without question it’s one of the best, most fulfilling things I’ve done in my entire life, personally or professionally. But you’re going through some beautiful places, having really great meetings with people but it was always in the back of my mind that I hadn’t finished yet.
‘People were slapping me on the back, saying nice things which was great, but I tried to keep a lid on that until I got to about Devon. I was always thinking, this is kind, but I’ve still got 400, 500, 600 miles to go and all sorts could still go wrong.
‘I hadn’t allocated any time to thinking how I’d feel when I completed it, because I didn’t dare to be that blasé. I would have been devastated if I hadn’t managed to finish it. It’s one thing telling people you’re going to do something, it’s another thing to deliver it, and deliver it when you said you would.’
Walker is a dedicated runner and unbelievably fit so despite the journey being over 1,000 miles, completing the task never really seemed in doubt, although there was a point early on when he was worried about just how tough it would be.
‘There was only one day when I got nervous, I think day four or five, when the head winds were absolutely savage. It was relentless,’ he said.
‘I remember that day being really hard, I didn’t think I wasn’t going to finish it, but I certainly thought that night in the campervan, if it’s as hard as today with another two weeks to go, it’s going to be unimaginably difficult. I was nervous.
‘Thankfully that’s as bad as the headwinds got. Other than that I was quite disciplined with breaking it down into individual chunks.
‘If I was doing say, a seven mile run and a 55 mile ride on one day, I tried not to think about the next day. Just do that, get to bed, wake up, eat then think about it. You had to compartmentalise to avoid it becoming overwhelming.’
Remarkably, Walker was not only completing the mammoth task but also doing his day job along the way, interviewing famous faces from the world of snooker and the detailed planning, thankfully, all went perfectly.
‘In a way it couldn’t have gone any better,’ he said. ‘Considering how far it is and how much could have gone wrong, it was pretty amazing.
‘The schedule was tight with the TV interviews and the snooker interviews, it was unreal. Even on the first Sunday I was meeting Anthony McGill and Alan McManus in the centre of Glasgow and it was a tight deadline.
‘I bombed it to the campsite, got a lift into Glasgow in my cycling kit, got changed in a shopping arcade into something half respectable and got to the pub five minutes before McManus turned up, so it was all really tight but worked out perfectly. It was remarkable. and the weather was so kind, it was unreal.’
The idea was to hand out bottles of Prosecco every day to strangers, allowing them to toast their absent friends, and it had the desired effect.
Rob explained: ‘It’s meaningless really, if someone’s grieving for someone they love, a nine quid bottle of prosecco is not going to cure the ills of the world. But I thought it might strike a chord with people and I think it did.
‘The best one was in Congleton, we had parked outside a barber shop, there were three barbers and three customers so we went in to give a bottle to all of them.
‘They were looking at me wondering what I was trying to sell to them. I gave them all a bottle, explained what I was doing and why I was doing it. They were all surprised but shook my hand, then I went outside the owner followed me out and told me his 14-year-old daughter had developed a tumour and they’ve been waiting for a long time to find out how serious it is. Thankfully they just found out it is benign, she’ll need an operation but she’ll be ok, but it struck a chord with him because of what his family had been through recently.
‘Another time a guy at the campsite was very helpful, opening gates for us as we were leaving so I popped out to give him a bottle. I told him the story behind it and he started crying! He’d buried his mum the day before, so he said he’d drink it in his mum’s honour.
‘It turned out he ran it and he scrapped our bill for the campsite. That’s what it was like all the way through, people were emotionally involved and so helpful. I saw nothing but the best of the great British public for 19 days, that is the reason it’ll stay with me forever.’
The Absent Friends Tour was in honour of three close friends of Rob’s – Martyn, Stephen and Robin – who sadly died and, heartbreakingly, a great friend of his son who died at just nine years old.
George’s dad, Paul, joined Rob for the final week of the trip and, despite the tragic nature of why they were there, they were thinking positively and honouring George’s memory.
‘The final week was poignant because George’s dad Paul, who has become a really good friend of mine, came along for it,’ said Rob. ‘I read George’s eulogy at his funeral, which is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
‘We had some great conversations about George, it was really good that George was front and centre in our thoughts and Paul was comfortable telling funny stories about him.
‘We went through a place in Cornwall called Minions and I noticed on the sign when we arrived that people had put Minions stickers all over it. I said to Paul that George would have absolutely loved that, he’d seen it as well and thought the same, so we stopped for a picture.’
‘We also had one fantastic day when a number of Martyn’s friends came and cycled with me and we ended at a pub in Portishead that Martyn used to drink in and had a couple of pints, Martyn’s parents came along too.
‘In the last week I was allowing myself to think about the people that were involved and why I was doing it. I could sense that the finish line was coming, but the first 10-13 days I was trying to keep a lid on my emotions a bit.’
The lid came off the emotions right at the end of the trip as Land’s End came into sight and both the enormity of what he had achieved and the memories of his friends took over.
‘The last day was a 10k run and my friend was filming me as I came over the brow of a hill to the last 800m which is slightly downhill,’ Rob explained. ‘I could see Land’s End ahead and I just started crying while I was running. It was then that I unequivocally knew that I was actually going to do it.
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‘When I finished, there were quite a few of my friends and family there and it was really strange when I came in. It’s a touristy area and there was a lot of noise, but when I touched the post and stopped the whole place went silent.
‘I was crying because what I’d done and the reasons for doing it hit home. I sat down behind the post immersed in my thoughts of the four of them, the journey, everyone I’d met along the way.
‘It was really nice because obviously the magnitude of the moment seemed to resonate with the people there because it was totally silent until I got up and turned round and started engaging with people. I think people sensed how important that little moment of quiet was.’
An incredible achievement to complete the journey under such physical and emotional strain but also an immense effort in fundraising.
Setting an initial target of £25,000 for the Brain Tumour Charity and Jessie May Children’s Hospice, the total has surpassed £57,000 and can still grow yet.
Donations can still be made here.
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